A Note on my Religious Work

For those of you who know me from EWTN, the Society of GK Chesterton, the Prairie Troubadours or The St. Austin Review, I am no longer affiliated with any of those groups.

• "The truth will set you free" (John 8:32)
• "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." (John 18:37)

If we deny the truth, we are bad Christians and bad human beings.

If we put our faith in a lie - including a Big Lie - we are bad Christians and bad human beings.

If we endorse vulgarity, violence, bullying, gaslighting, fraud, irrational conspiracy theories, sedition and hate, we are bad Christians and bad human beings.

Since March of 2020, I have felt like a character in the play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco.  In that play, the bestial inhumanity of rhinoceroses becomes a fad and people start turning into them - willingly discarding reason and free will and mocking others who don't.

Meanwhile, since I think some of my posts on this blog contributed to this problem, I have taken them all down [Edit - though I am now planning on reposting some of them - Sept. 30, 2024].  You may follow me at https://theateroftheword.substack.com/.

How People Argue "Eristically"

In philosophy and rhetoric, eristic (from Eris, the ancient Greek goddess of chaos, strife, and discord) refers to argument that aims to successfully dispute another's argument, rather than searching for truth. - Wikipedia

You know you're in an eristic or bad faith discussion with someone when he or she does the following ...

• Your opponent refuses to engage the most important points you're making.
• Your opponent focuses on issues that are minor or tangential to your main argument.
• Your opponent demands evidence to support your tangential points, while providing only opinion and no evidence to support his own claims.
• Your opponent directly or indirectly attacks your motivations, thus moving the discussion away from the issue to your character.
• Invariably, if you're arguing with an eristic "Devout Catholic", you'll be told (in so many words) to go to confession for defending your position with any zeal, fortitude or persistence; or, in lieu of that, you'll be referred to a Scripture verse that implies that you are lacking in charity for standing up for the truth.
• Your opponent will completely ignore tone, context and the obvious connection between ideas in anything you say.

It is futile to argue with such a person.  Your opponent is not interested in discovering the truth.  To engage such a person is not only frustrating and a waste of time, it is a sin.  It is casting "pearls before swine" (Mat. 7:6)

Charlie Johnston Exposed!

Here are some observations by Dr. Jim Dooley on Charlie Johnston.  ...

***

Written October 14, 2017.

Charlie Johnston is a false prophet and most probably a fraud.  I can’t guess with complete certainty if he is a fraud / liar, delusional / mentally ill, or deceived by demons.  However, it really doesn’t matter; he’s any combination of the above.  He’s now wrong – yet again.  He’s racking up quite a collection of totally failed, so - called prophecies:  

• He predicted that there’d be no peaceful transfer of power.
• He predicted that Barack Obama would extend his term.
• He predicted that President Trump wouldn’t be sworn in.
• He predicted that the next American leader wouldn’t come from the normal electoral process.
• He predicted we’d witness this as a sign from God, so we would believe.
• He predicted the breakout of a world – wide civil war AND a complete economic collapse.
• He predicted that during the period from October 13 to October 17, 2017, we’d be totally, visibly & miraculously delivered via the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  
• He predicted that virtually the entire global population would convert to Catholicism.
• He predicted that our infrastructure would be broken down & we’d be simplified.
• Wrong on every prediction; that’s a perfect record!

We must note that he has been forbidden by his Archbishop to speak at any

church – owned properties and his followers have twice been strongly advised by the Archdiocese to, first, place their faith only in Jesus, the Scriptures and the Sacraments, and, second, to avoid trying to interpret his failed prophecies as valid.  The Magisterium has spoken.  Period.  Yet he still publishes articles on his blog, ‘The Next Right Step.’

Additionally, he has a cult - like following, which troubles me greatly.  He claims

to say simply that everyone must take the next right step and be a sign of hope to those around them.  Obviously, we don’t need Charlie to tell us to perform acts of charity towards others, especially when the world is in dire straits, which we can all clearly observe by simply viewing the nightly news, i.e. gay ‘marriage’, global wars, etc.  Thank you for stating the obvious, Charlie.  

I have nothing personal against Charlie, who’s a fellow Catholic.  Yet, significantly & deeply troubling, he used his alleged supernatural “prophecies” to initially attract and subsequently maintain, & actually augment, what has evolved into a cult – like following.  He obviously basks in the attention.  He also repeatedly scrubbed negative comments from his blog, allowing only supportive ones from his cult members to remain.  Finally, he attempted to spin a clear smack down from two separate Catholic Bishops, the Archbishop of Denver and the Bishop of Bismark, into something positive.  

He’s been proven to be a complete fraud yet again; has been proven false numerous times, and must be given no more platform, ever!  Yet, despite his repeated false and failed predictions, he has the unbelievable audacity to continue to post articles on his blog ‘TNRS / Abraham’s Journey”.  He has quietly returned and posted numerous articles on his blog, despite his promise to vanish from the public scene if he was proven false – which he has been.  He quietly returned, clearly for his own selfish and egocentric reasons.  At least have the honor to vanish.

He, his blog, and emails from ‘TNRS / Abraham’s Journey’ should be shunned.  The next right step must be to add Charlie to the dust bin of failed prophets & complete frauds.  Prayers for those whom he hurt, deceived & misled - and for him.  Charlie, and his dubious intentions, remain in our Rosary.  Ave Maria, Stella Maris!

***

Thanks to Jim for going through the effort to document all of Charlie's false prophecies - though it will make no difference to Charlie's True Believers.

The reason I finally stopped blogging at Waiting for Godot to Leave was that some of my readers continued to make excuses for Charlie, even after he admitted lying about his claim that he and I had emailed one another. 

Charlie's followers - if they still continue to put any faith in this man - are getting exactly what they deserve.

The Russians are Coming!

And here's something I've been pondering.  I can understand people's concern over Russia using Facebook to influence our election.  But how is Russian propaganda different from US Democratic or Republican or corporate or Think Thank propaganda?  If we're concerned that Russia can use keenly targeted psychological manipulation of voters - what about advertising in general and the domestic forces that do the same?  If I found out that our water supply in St. Louis were being poisoned by Russia, I'd be no happier to learn that, on the contrary, it was being poisoned by Disney.

I Would If I Could

The admiration for the successful demagogue is admiration for the strongman from afar. "That's how I would live! I won't because I'm Christian - but I would if I could!" But, as Jesus tells us, what's inside the cup is what needs to be cleaned, because "I would if I could" becomes "I will when I can" - and so, for instance, with porn now being ubiquitous, guys simply use it. Christians could pretend to be sexually pure 50 years ago, but now that affirming the temptation has become effortless, we men in general find out what we're really made of. "I would if I could" becomes "I will when I can".

St. Flannery of Milledgeville

I am reading Flannery's O'Connor's letters.  I was bored until her correspondence from 1955.  Before then, she was writing to friends about money, book deals, things she was reading.  But in 1955, she took up a correspondence with a woman from Atlanta, a Pagan pantheist / agnostic who is referred to as "Miss A."  Suddenly Flannery confronts the Big Questions and the result is awesome.  Here are some selections from Flannery O'Connor's correspondence with "Miss A."  ...

... our salvation is worked out on earth according as we love one another, see Christ in one another, etc., by works.  This is one reason I am chary of using the word, love, loosely.  I prefer to use it in its practical forms, such as prayer, almsgiving, visiting the sick and burying the dead and so forth.

... the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed.  It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it ...
One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, the whole reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience.  My audience are the people who think God is dead.  At least these are the people I am conscious of writing for.
As for Jesus' being a realist: if He was not God, He was no realist, only a liar, and the crucifixtion an act of justice.
Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God.  The person outside the Church attaches a different meaning to it than the person in.  For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not of restriction.

That last one is great.  Eric Voegelin was all about contemplation of God, and he thought dogma got in the way of that.  But Flannery says dogma "preserves the mystery".  And yet how many Christians use dogma as something that incites to further prayer or wonder?  Many use dogma as the end of the question, not the beginning of it.

More from St. Flannery ...

Whether you are a Christian or not, we both worship the God Who Is.  St. Thomas on his death bed said of the Summa, "it's all straw," - this was in the vision of that God.

And here we have her using a metaphor that I have also used.  Of conversion or membership in the Church, she said ...

I suppose it is like marriage, that when you get into it, you find it is the beginning, not the end, of the struggle to make love work.

Now that is brilliant - from a woman who was never married.  Marriage is the beginning, not the end, of the struggle to make love work.  That's very true indeed.

Flannery is reluctant to write about purity, calling it the most mysterious of virtues.

... it occurs to me that it would never have entered the human consciousness to conceive of purity if we were not to look forward to a resurrection of the body, which will be flesh and spirit united in peace, in the way they were in Christ.  The resurrection of Christ seems the high point in the law of nature. 

 

Elsewhere she says of purity ...

... it is an acceptance of what God wills for us, an acceptance of our individual circumstances.

And then she throws off lines like this.  She says she does not like to write about "the poor" ...

I won't say the poor, because I don't like to distinguish them.  Everybody, as far as I am concerned, is The Poor.

I love that!  And she also says some very evocative things like this ...

... I have come to think of sleep as metaphorically connected with the mother of God.  Hopkins said she was the air we breathe, but I have come to realize her most in the gift of going to sleep.  Life without her would be equivalent to me to life without sleep and as she contained Christ for a time, she seems to contain our life in sleep for a time so that we are able to wake up in peace.

And this is perhaps one of the greatest lines in all of literature, and it's so typically Flannery ...

Well, God rescues us from ourselves if we want Him to.

Yes indeed.  Well, God rescues us from ourselves if we want Him to.  That's perfect theology and perfect poetry and perfectly vernacular.  That should have gone on her tombstone.

And let me quote at length from her letter to Miss A. of Dec. 16, 1955.  She speaks of how she strives in her stories for the moral sense to coincide with the dramatic sense, and then she says this ...

... the devil's moral sense coincides at all points with his dramatic sense.

The devil understands, in other words, the deep connection between our acts (good and evil) and the consequences of our acts.  We would rather pretend as if that connection did not exist.  The devil is braver than that, and peers right into that connection, delighting to send souls to hell.

And here she is speculating on the General Resurrection.

As I understand it, the Church teaches that our resurrected bodies will be intact as to personality, that is, intact with all the contradictions beautiful to you, except the contradiction of sin; sin is the contradiction, the interference, of a greater good by a lesser good.  I look for all variety in that unity but not for a choice: for when all you see will be God, all you will want will be God.

This is why, I would add, we are to be Salt of the Earth.  We are to become more distinct and individually flavorful, not less.

And she includes this in her Dec. 16 letter, one of her most famous quotes and the one thing that people know from her letters ...

I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater.  (She just wrote that book, A Charmed Life, reviewed in Time.)  She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual. We went at eight and at one, I hadn't opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say. The people who took me were Robert Lowell and his now wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them. Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the "most portable" person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, "Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it." That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest is expendable.

The Body and Blood of Christ is Love Incarnate.  As is marriage, which "is the beginning, not the end, of the struggle to make love work."

Compare Tolkien ...

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth … which every man’s heart desires”

What is the Soul?

What is the soul?  It is not the ghost in the machine of our bodies.

This is the soul.  Read on.  It's dense, but I paraphrase after.  From Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History by Eugene Webb ,,, 

If we consider that human existence is constituted as a tension of longing or striving toward conscious participation in reality and that this striving proceeds through reflective mediation in consciousness, we might diagram the total pattern in the following way: The line with the arrowhead in this picture represents the tension of existence both as experienced on the level of immediacy and as articulated in consciousness through the medium of symbolization. “R” stands for reality, in which the inquirer is immediately involved through his participation in existence and which he also comes to know reflectively. As such it is intended to embrace all that is, including the entire process represented in the diagram. The figure in the middle marked with “S” is in the shape of a lens. “S” stands for symbol; this may take the specific form of visual symbols, myths, ideas, philosophical propositions, and so on. It could even take the form of dance or liturgy. Whatever its form, it functions to represent some aspect of the reality attended to through it and to direct inquiry toward that. This is why it is represented in the diagram as a lens; it is not, when it is functioning properly, an object of attention in its own right, but serves as a focusing device to direct attention beyond itself toward the object of interest. It is only through that lens or medium that human existence can attain consciousness and reflective knowledge of the real, even when what is inquired into is human existence.

...

It is the diagram as a whole that depicts psyche. The symbol psyche refers to the entire process of participation in reality, its symbolization, and the tension that moves and guides the process.

To translate:

We experience reality by a longing for it, a pull toward it, a desire to know it.  We desire Wisdom, which is God, fullness of reality, the satisfaction of our "restless hearts".  This is Eros, the search, the quest, the desire: the straight line in the diagram is the "tension of existence", the tension which all ideologues try to destroy by coming up with Closed Systems (Unrealities).  Many Devout Catholics function as mere ideologues, "quenching the Spirit" (1 Thes. 5:19), suppressing the Question, the "tension of existence" by building a substitute reality.  In the same way that porn can be a substitute for a man's sexual desire, so Unreality is a substitute for our spiritual desire.  Sexual longing is scary because it brings us into relationship, commitment, families, babies, self-sacrifice - all the things that take us outside of ourselves.  Porn and autoeroticism is safe because it gives a substitute payoff without any of the risks, satisfying desire on a basic (or immanent) level while thwarting it on a more remote (or transcendent) level.

The other aspect of this diagram is the "lens" of symbolism or representation.  Beyond the most basic level of the senses, consciousness only seems to function via symbolism (including language, rational thinking, story, art and myth).  If the symbols become mere doxa, superficial appearances or representations that no longer represent, signs that point to nothing beyond themselves, to no greater aspect of reality, if the map becomes more important than the road or the journey's destination, then we have a kind of anti-Mary (not unlike antichrist).  As Mary is the lens whose soul "magnifies the Lord", she represents how living and loving symbols and beings can show us God.  The antimary would be any symbol or being that becomes opaque, allocating God's glory to itself and blocking the light beyond.

And ... according to Eric Voegelin and the ancient Greek philosophers ... this IS the soul, the psyche, this pull toward reality through the lens of life and reflection.

The soul is not the ghost within the body. 

The soul is this deeply moving and illuminating ... and dangerous and risky ... experience.

A Greek Word for BS

I love my Homeschool Connections students, who are generally bright, creative and engaged with the material I'm teaching.

However, something disappointing occasionally happens when I ask for an essay from even the best of my students.  If I ask for a brief essay answer on a quiz, and ask for the student's reaction to what is most challenging or surprising or mysterious about the material we're reading, they frequently speak intelligently and from the heart.  But if I ask for an essay that's more formal, they gird up their loins, take a deep breath, and spew out BS.

Sometimes it's halfway decent BS.  Sometimes the essays are well structured and written without glaring errors in grammar or punctuation.  But the more formal the essay, the more I get the Party Line.  And the Party Line for Devout Catholic Homeschoolers goes something like this ...

What this course has taught me is the dangers of gay marriage and how we will all go astray unless we believe in God and how awful abortion is and what is this world coming to? and how people in the world are making huge mistakes and we will only be saved by being very careful and no wonder the world will end it's really awful.

That's all doxa.

What is doxa (δοχα)?  It's the Greek word for BS.

Gene Callahan writes ...

Plato made a very important distinction between philosophers and philodoxers. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom (σοφια). He tries to align his views with what is true. As such, the philosopher is always engaged in a search (ζετεσισ), since he realizes that he has views are never as true as they could be. We will see him continually updating and revising his views as he comes to see the truth more fully.

The philodoxer, on the hand, is a lover of appearances (δοχα). The philodoxer doesn't care about being good; the philodoxer cares about appearing good, in the opinion of others. The philodoxer doesn't care if his opinions are true; he cares about whether others will approve of his opinions.

And this is exactly what Harry G. Frankfurt says in his philosophical treatise "On Bullshit", describing, as carefully as possible, what "BS" is.  BS disregards truth and aims at impressing the hearer.  The BS-er is not concerned with what he says being true or not; he is only concerned with making the hearer think more highly of him.  A BS-ers claim is ...

... unconnected to a concern with the truth. Her statement is not germane to the enterprise of describing reality. ... She concocts it out of whole cloth; or, if she got it from someone else, she is repeating it quite mindlessly and without any regard for how things really are. 

I have a friend, a middle aged housewife, who overheard me talking about utopias.  "St. Thomas More's Utopia - that's on my reading list!  I can't wait to read it."

Now this is pure BS.  St. Thomas More's Utopia is not on anyone's reading list - unless they're taking a college course that requires them to read it.  And this person is the last person on earth who would actually desire to read that book.  But my friend wants to make a good impression on me and so she dumps some BS.

This friend of mine also nods in silent understanding if a baseball sportscaster makes a detailed analysis of a play on the radio.  If a sportscaster says, "His open stance compromises his ability to hit a breaking ball if the shift is on and if the pitcher has a good cut fastball to offer up."  She'll nod at this knowingly - as if she's in agreement - with something she doesn't even begin to comprehend.

Well, this is BS.  And so many people live their lives in BS mode.  There is no truth, there is only doxa, opinions about the surface of things.  Thus, many Catholics adopt the sub-culture because the sub-culture is the Faith, in their eyes.  What makes a good Catholic?  Devotions, novenas, daily Mass, Scott Hahn CDs, EWTN, prayer cards ... in short, the trappings, the mere indicia.  Now, there's nothing wrong with these things.  But they are all means to an end, not the end itself.

And yet philodoxers and BS-ers care about appearances and shibboleths more than the truth that they may (or may not) point to.  Thus I get the Party Line in formal essays.

But here's something that really is amazing, if you think about it.  We all BS, and we all trust in BS, as if BS could save us.  But, whether you're a Christian or an atheist, there's one thing you have to admit.

One man in history lived without any BS.  Even if you don't think He was the Word incarnate, you have to admit that.

Why Seems It So Particular with Thee?

John Henry Newman on a problem he noticed roughly 200 years ago ...

It is very much the fashion at present to regard the Saviour of the world in an irreverent and unreal way—as a mere idea or vision ... [offering] vague statements about His love ... [and] while the thought of Christ is but a creation of our minds, it may gradually be changed or fade away.

... so this is not a new problem.

Against this vagueness and blur, in opposition to the Unreality of Jesus the Nice Guy, Newman suggests something that most Catholics would consider novel.  He says to know this Person Jesus, you could simply read the Gospels.

... when we contemplate Christ as manifested in the Gospels, the Christ who exists therein, external to our own imaginings, and who is as really a living being, and sojourned on earth as truly as any of us, then we shall at length believe in Him with a conviction, a confidence, and an entireness, which can no more be annihilated than the belief in our senses. It is impossible for a Christian mind to meditate on the Gospels, without feeling, beyond all manner of doubt, that He who is the subject of them is God; but it is very possible to speak in a vague way of His love towards us, and to use the name of Christ, yet not at all to realize that He is the Living Son of the Father, or to have any anchor for our faith within us, so as to be fortified against the risk of future defection. 

I know this is difficult 19th century prose, but what he's saying is simply that Christ had a particular character, and was not an amorphous blob, blurry and fuzzy: and His character was, rather disturbingly, Divine.

The theological implication of this fact is what I would call the particularity of the saints.

We are sanctified not as indistinguishable blurry "nice guys" but as very particular individuals with zest and with deliberate things we are and are not.  Grace perfects nature, including the nature of our form, our limitations, our personalities.

Young people today seem to think that individuality is all about what music you like.  Demographic marketing and the niche of your favorite band defines who you are, and so if you find someone who likes the same garage band as you, you've found (one would assume) a compatible friend.  But, on the contrary, the mystery of who we are, and of what we are called to (our vocation) is much more personal and particular and even more biting and painful than the music we listen to.

It is like the stinging taste of salt.  And this ringing and stringent flavor is something we are not to deny.

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.  (Mat. 5:13)

But when was the last time you went to a suburban Mass and had any sense that the particular - the particular anything - mattered?

Pure Poetry

I found this poem about the internet.  It's by Hendrik Mans.    ...

The web is

ADVE
RTISE
MENT

all of humankind’s knowledge at

ADVE
RTISE
MENT

your fingertips.

THE 10 MOST HORRIFYING THINGS YOU CAN EAT

Agnostics and the Meaning of Life

This is from Eric Voegelin's lecture "In Search of the Ground".

One should be aware that we always act as if we had an ultimate purpose in fact, as if our life made some sort of sense. I find students frequently are flabbergasted, especially those who are agnostics, when I tell them that they all act, whether agnostics or not, as if they were immortal! Only under the assumption of immortality, of a fulfillment beyond life, is the seriousness of action intelligible that they actually put into their work and that has a fulfillment nowhere in this life however long they may live. They all act as if their lives made sense immortally, even if they deny immortality, deny the existence of a psyche, deny the existence of a Divinity—in brief, if they are just the sort of fairly corrupt average agnostics that you find among college students today. One shouldn’t take their agnosticism too seriously, because in fact they act as if they were not agnostics!

Why We Can't Communicate

To explain why we can't communicate requires some skill in communication.

I'm going to try to paraphrase an essay by Eric Voegelin.  But every time I enthusiastically share Eric Voegelin quotes with a friend, I lose that friend.  There seems to be something intimidating in the way Voegelin writes that makes people's eyes gloss over.  So here, in essence, is what Voegelin says in his essay "Necessary Moral Bases for Communication in a Democracy", with as few direct Voegelin quotes as possible.

Voegelin says that there are three types of Communication - Substantive, Pragmatic and Intoxicant.

• Intoxicant communication is communication used as a drug.  Bad TV shows, most pop music, pornography - any kind of communication that people use not only as diversions, but as pain killers to plug the holes of their misery.

• Pragmatic communication is any kind of communication that tries to get another person to do something.  Propaganda is the most obvious example of this type of communication, including advertising, but so is basic instruction in skills and techniques.  Unlike intoxicating communication, which is "toxic", Pragmatic Communication is neutral, as it could encourage someone to do something good or something bad.

• Substantive communication is "concerned with the right order of the human psyche."  And the human psyche is only rightly ordered by the Love of God, or the orientation of our intellectual and moral capacity toward the Good, the True and the Beautiful, toward the transcendent reality in which we seek full participation.  

Thus, Substantive Communication is good and it is most truly called "education", but Pragmatic Communication is neutral and is merely indoctrination, while Intoxicant Communication is poisonous and is something worse than a pastime.  

And yet, says Voegelin, Substantive Communication has vanished from our society, and all that is left is the Pragmatic and the Intoxicant.

Voegelin illustrates this by giving an overview of modern history.  People hold mere "opinions" these days and argue irrationally (eristically) to defend their "opinions" (see Facebook and any comment box on the internet) because our society is fragmented and we aren't really trying to communicate, we are fighting an ongoing war.

The war started about five hundred years ago and had three major phases, which look like this ...

• Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Wars, Peace Settlements
• French Revolution, Reaction, Wars, Peace Settlements
• Totalitarianism, Liberalism, Wars, Peace Settlements

Voegelin says this is really not three wars, but one long campaign, marked by the removal of "the transcendental order in the community".  Removing "the transcendental order in the community" means replacing the objective and recognized Good that is Beyond with a subjective and asserted good that is arbitrary and man-made.

Hobbes, Voegelin says, did this explicitly in the 17th century with Leviathan, replacing the community's striving toward the highest good (summum bonum) with the human desire to avoid the greatest evil (summum malum).  Reason, from Hobbes on, is put at the service of the avoidance of suffering and death, and not at the service of life and higher purpose.

And with a remarkable insight, Voegelin says that the "substance of order" - the reality that once oriented society and was the subject of "Substantive Communication" - has degraded.  It has moved down the scale of Being.  The summum bonum has degenerating from 

• God, to
• Reason enthroned in the Enlightenment, to
• The pragmatic intellect (technology), to
• Utilitarianism (mere usefulness), to
• Economic equity (Marxism), to
• The Master Race (Nazism), to
• Biological Drives (Desire - our Gods are our bellies, as St. Paul describes it in Phil. 3:19)

And if you argue with a Fad Atheist of today, he'll tell you that the Greatest Good is determined by "evolution" or biochemistry, which is a fancy way of saying "gonads".

Once Communication is no longer an attempt to build a communion oriented toward Truth, then you have Unreality, or a Secondary Reality, or (as Voegelin calls it in this essay) a Substitute Substance.  It is not the real Substance that we seek to know and to join with, but the artificial one that we have put in its place.

Voegelin calls this the "ontological reduction" and says

A man who is confused about the essentials of his existence is incapable of rational action; and if he is incapable of rational action, he is incapable of moral action. If “opinion” is characterized by the conceptions of the nature of man and the order of society that have arisen in the course of the ontological reduction, the knowledge of the essentials of existence is badly disturbed. 

In other words, if the highest good is what comes from our lowest organs ... then what is there to communicate?  Substantive Communication is ruled out, and all that remains is Intoxication and Pragmatism - the latter being the forced molding of man into a new and inhuman thing, as expressed in Brave New World, 1984 and The Abolition of Man.

Moreover, the type of pragmatic communication that we have distinguished acquires a new and sinister meaning in this situation, insofar as communication becomes essentially pragmatic when it moves on the level of substitute substance. It cannot function as persuasion in the Platonic sense at all, but only induce conformist states of mind and conforming behavior. 

In other words, all that's left these days is not so much Communication as Bullying.